Growing the subreddit

The Tangentially Speaking subreddit was created by a fan in the early days of the podcast. Like most subreddits, it was relatively inactive for months as it had less than 100 subscribers. When we found out about the subreddit, we contacted Chris Ryan to tell him about it and suggest that he promote it. He told us he already knew about the subreddit and said he would start promoting it to his listeners and website visitors.

Since then, Ryan has promoted the subreddit on just about every episode of the podcast and added this button to the sidebar of his website.

This resulted in consistent growth of the subreddit, which now has over 700 subscribers. With a healthy subscriber base the subreddit now features discussions of each episode, related news and content, questions about the podcast, and links to content that features Chris Ryan.

Benefits of the subreddit

The Tangentially Speaking subreddit is a relatively minor part of Chris Ryan’s overall internet presence, but the community offers benefits that cannot be replicated by social media or other community platforms.

Free and easy to maintain

Chris Ryan does not pay a dime to keep the subreddit going and he does not have to host the subreddit or maintain it in anyway. The community is moderated by fans so Chris doesn’t have to worry about off-topic or inappropriate content submissions.

Space for audience interaction

The subreddit gives his audience a functional space to have discussions and interact with each other. Discussions can happen on social media, but they are fragmented (e.g. two fans could be talking about the same thing on Twitter, but neither knows about it). The subreddit creates a sense of community for the listeners and allows them to make the podcast a bigger part of their life.

Unsolicited feedback

Listeners use the subreddit to make suggestions and identify potential mistakes that were made by Chris Ryan. In a recent episode, Ryan described the subreddit like this:

“People are talking about episodes and books and clarifying bullshit that I say and things I forget. It’s nice, it’s like having a team of fact checkers looking over my shoulder.” – Chris Ryan

Fan creations

Give fans a place to share their creations and they will start creating things. Recently, a couple listeners started taking interesting clips from the podcast and putting them on YouTube.

A listener shares a fan-created clip from the podcast in the form of a YouTube video.

These clips are essentially promotional content for the podcast. As the community grows, more and more fan-art and content will be created.

Unlimited potential

As the community grows they could potentially do more and more collaborative activities like a book club, couch surfing network, charity drive, or activism campaign. It is impossible to say what amazing things they will do, but the podcast will benefit from being associated with them.

TL;DR

Subreddits are a great community platform option for podcasters. Podcast subreddits are often started by fans, but a little help from the host can significant grow the size of the community. Once an active subreddit is established, it becomes an added feature to the podcast that makes it more valuable for listeners.

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